November 21, 2025
Memorial of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Today we celebrate the Feast of the Presentation of Mary into the Temple. There is no reference to this event in the canon of the Scriptures. It appears around the year 200 AD in the apocryphal Protoevangelium of James. The story relates how Joachim and Ann […]
November 20, 2025
We read in today’s Gospel that Jesus wept as he drew near to Jerusalem, viewing the unrest being experienced by the people. He lamented: ‘If this day you only knew what makes for peace…” Might not our Savior have the same reaction if he were to be near just about any major city in the […]
November 19, 2025
Jesus said to those standing by, “I tell you, to everyone who has will be given more; but from the man who has not, even what he has will be taken away. The poor servant in today’s gospel passage! He buried his master’s money for fear it would be somehow lost or stolen, and instead […]
November 18, 2025
Like the inspirational 90-year-old Eleazar, we each make choices relative to our faith. Ours, thankfully, are not typically matters of life and death, but they are still consequential. If one is pro-life, some people will regard us with disgust. If one is pro-life and against the death penalty, the response can be “you are so […]
November 17, 2025
Memorial of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, Religious Today, we celebrate the Memorial of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary. We honor her life of profound charity and service to the poor and sick. Born a princess in 1207, she married and later became a widow, dedicating her life to serving the less fortunate after joining the Secular Franciscan Order, where she founded […]
November 16, 2025
33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time As we move toward the end of the Church year, we are invited to reflect upon the apocalyptic end time. We are presented with terrifying images of earthquakes, famines, plagues, and nations rising against nations. As we look around our world today, we may be tempted to say the end […]
November 15, 2025
In a world where hustle and bustle are the norm, praying without ceasing can be a struggle for some, but is it really? Praying comes in all shapes and sizes. For some, it comes from reading prayer books, saying prayers we recited as children, or saying the rosary on the way to work. What is […]
November 14, 2025
November is the last month of the liturgical year, as the church is called to reflect on the reality of death. Our gospel raises apocalyptic signs of destruction that will precede the coming of the Son of Man. We are brought back to the days of Noah before the flood. In various ways, people are […]
November 13, 2025
Memorial of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, Virgin Today we celebrate the Feast of Saint Frances Cabrini. The movie about her in the theater did a very good job of touching on all the challenges she had to overcome. There were many similar experiences that Saint Peter Julian and Saint Terese of Calcutta lived. I was […]
November 12, 2025
Give and Take and Give We can be pretty clumsy expressing our thanks with canned phrases to cover our uneasiness, anxiety, or a feeling of obligation to receive a gift. We embellish our thanks with a few “You shouldn’t have’s’ or some other hollow platitude. When on the receiving end of a gift, or an […]